Sterling Squadron (22 page)

ETHAN WISHED HE COULD HAVE EATEN WITH
his friends in the pilots’ mess. (
Mess
was the military word for “cafeteria” and had nothing to do with the state of a kitchen’s cleanliness.) He also wanted to sleep. But every time he closed his eyes, he saw his sister falling through the air … Felix and Madison and the others all trying to save her—and dying in flames.

And every time he tried to push those thoughts from his mind, the colonel’s last orders echoed in his skull—that
he
had to get them ready for tomorrow, to fly into their first, and maybe their last, battle.

So that only left one option: he hid.

Ethan had slipped away to the incubation caverns. He sat on the floor with his knees tucked up to his chest.

This was where Resister scientists raised giant insect grubs. The bugs grew and spun cocoons that solidified into a concrete-hard chrysalis as they underwent metamorphosis. The cases hung from the cave like smooth stalactites. Some were as small as garbage cans. Others were the size of trucks. Many glimmered with ghostly bioluminescent pinks, yellows, and greens. Inside, the bugs turned and shifted, restless.

Ethan figured it was the insect version of puberty.

This should have creeped him out, but instead it was warm, quiet, and, most important, peaceful in this cave.

He had just closed his eyes and relaxed when he heard footsteps.

Ethan scrunched up, hoping whoever it was didn’t see him and would go away.

“So here I find you.” Dr. Irving settled next to Ethan on the ground with a creaking of bones. “I thought so. I find it soothing as well. Sometimes I think I hear the metamorphosing insects gossiping with one another.”

Ethan imagined it differently. To him, it seemed as if the insects sang in their sleep. He didn’t understand the song but nonetheless found it comforting, like a lullaby.

“I won’t pretend I know how you feel,” Dr. Irving went on, adjusting his lab coat. “It must seem like the world has turned upside down since you got here and discovered part of the truth?”

Ethan exhaled. If there had to be an adult interrupting his hiding, he was glad it was Dr. Irving. He was the
one
grown-up who never gave him orders or told him he had to save the entire world.

“Wait,” Ethan said. “What do you mean
part
of the truth?”

Dr. Irving turned his hands up in an apologetic gesture. “There is always more truth to know—about us, our world, what it means to be human, the good … and the bad parts.”

Ethan already knew about the Ch’zar but sensed Dr. Irving meant something else.

“The ‘bad’ parts,” Ethan whispered. “You’re talking about
before
the aliens came. The demolished cities. The radiation in the desert. The Ch’zar didn’t do that, did they?”

“No, we did,” Dr. Irving said, and stared into the distance. “I did.”

“How could
you
have destroyed anything?” Ethan asked with a halfhearted laugh. “You
saved
everyone here.”

Dr. Irving had once told Ethan he’d built the Seed
Bank in total secrecy to save endangered species of plants and animals from the devastation of World War IV. Even the people who’d constructed the place had volunteered to stay inside to protect its hidden location. That’s why the Ch’zar had never found the place when they invaded and absorbed every adult human mind on the Earth’s surface. It was ironic that the most endangered species Dr. Irving had saved was free-willed humans.

“Yes, I saved everyone,” Dr. Irving admitted with a dry chuckle. “But not for the reasons you think. Before that, long before, I was a boy much like you … and I was much different. I grew up
wanting
to be a soldier. I joined the Northern Alliance Military Academy and graduated as a pilot, top of my class. I fought for freedom, for political ideals, for land, for money, and ultimately for power.”

Ethan stared at Dr. Irving until his features resolved in the dim light.

He no longer saw the face of the kindly scientist he knew. It might’ve been the shadows, but the wrinkles and worry lines seemed to cut deeper.

“I became the grand admiral of the air, Supreme Commander Gordon Victor Irving,” he told Ethan. “They called me the Storm Falcon because I rained destruction upon the earth. I almost destroyed it
all
.”

Storm Falcon? That was Dr. Irving’s computer password.

Ethan remembered the broken city in Knucklebone Canyon. Dr. Irving had caused all that? Ethan refused to believe it. But the doctor had never lied to him either.

“That was the reason I created the Seed Bank,” Dr. Irving explained. “I nearly burned the world to a cinder. I was responsible for so much death. It was only fitting that I atone and try to save the tiny bit of life that was left.”

He sighed. The light that always sparkled in Dr. Irving’s eyes was gone.

Conflicting feelings boiled inside Ethan—disgust that one person had caused so much suffering, a shred of admiration because he’d tried to make amends, and pity because Dr. Irving had had to live with the burden of his past for so long.

Ethan honestly didn’t know what to think of Dr. Irving anymore. He wasn’t sure this wasn’t some story to distract Ethan from the upcoming battle.

Dr. Irving got to his feet with a grunt of effort. “Listen to me, talking about ancient history. I came here to help with
your
problems, not mine. Come, young man. Sitting in the dark the night before a battle is no way for leaders to act.”

Dr. Irving walked out of the cavern.

Ethan jumped up and ran after him. “Hey!” he called. “What’d you mean, help me? How?”

For an old guy, Dr. Irving could walk awfully fast. He’d made it to the spiral stairs that led down to the flight deck before Ethan caught up to him.

“I could never sleep the night before a battle either,” he told Ethan. “You worry about the enemy, how your pilots will do, and how you will command them in the moments they need you the most.”

Dr. Irving emerged onto the flight deck.

Before them, thirty-three I.C.E. suits—the entire Resister joint squadron force—lined up in one long row: the bumblebees of Becka’s Bombers, the wasps and hornets of Jack Figgin’s Black and Blue Hawks, and assorted three-unit strike teams.

Ethan’s wasp was there, too.

His spirits soared as he took in its freshly polished, gleaming gold-and-black armor, and its antennae perked to full alertness.

It knew a fight was coming. It was ready.

Ethan wished he felt the same way.

Tending the insects was an army of technicians, loading missiles, topping off power cells with sparking jumper cables, checking and rechecking every inch of their exoskeletons one last time.

“Nothing helps but this,” Dr. Irving said. “You make sure you’ve done everything to prepare, and make sure that the men and women who follow you see that you’re confident—because strategy rarely survives without inspiration.”

For a moment, the doctor sounded so brave that Ethan believed he really had been the supreme commander of the air, the “Storm Falcon,” long ago.

He
should be the one out there leading the Resisters into battle.

Of course, he couldn’t go. No grown-up could.

It was up to the kids.

And even though Ethan wanted to deny it, he knew it was up to him to lead.

“How can I ask anyone to follow me?” Ethan whispered. “Felix is the ranking noncommissioned officer. Even Madison, a corporal, outranks me, which is right, because I don’t have a tenth of the airtime experience either of them does.”

Dr. Irving held up a gnarled finger to silence him.

“Tut-tut, young man. Yes, Felix and Madison are superb pilots. Felix is an unsurpassed NCO and no doubt will be a leader one day, perhaps even leader of the Seed Bank like his mother. But who was the only neighborhood-raised child to see the truth and accept it despite years of
Ch’zar programming? Who then fought them with all his heart and won, despite overwhelming—one might even say astronomical—odds? Who stole one of our own I.C.E. wasps right under our noses and went back to try to rescue his sister from Santa Blanca? And, I might add, in doing so inspired a dozen Resister pilots to go AWOL and fight alongside him? And who broke his biggest rival out of the brig and then liberated the students of Sterling—an operation so far-fetched, no one here would have ever dared dream of it?”

Dr. Irving poked Ethan in the chest.

“You. And only you, Mr. Blackwood.”

All those things were true. But none of it mattered right now.

“That doesn’t mean I can lead anyone,” Ethan protested. “Not into a
real
battle.”

Dr. Irving ignored him. “You have a combination of talents no other pilot here has: an incredible aptitude for aerial combat, a strategic genius, and a certain disregard for authority.”

Ethan hung his head.

So he’d come up with a few crazy schemes. So he’d gotten superlucky. That didn’t make him a good leader. His so-called skills wouldn’t be enough this time.

And yet he could see the big picture in the heat of
battle. Would that translate to seeing a good strategy when there’d be hundreds of units in the air at the same time?

“As I said,” Dr. Irving told him, “nothing I can do will help with your doubts before a fight, but
this
may help with the technical command issues that have you concerned.”

He reached into his lab coat pocket and took out a small black box the size of a pack of playing cards.

“Colonel Winter, her senior staff, and myself have unanimously agreed on this.”

He strode to Ethan’s wasp and tapped a control on one of the biomonitors. The giant wasp curled over, bending its head so its eyes were level with the doctor’s. He touched the box to the wasp’s black head cowl. A silver bar appeared on the center of the armor segment. It shone, reflecting the blue deck lights.

Ethan’s breath caught in his throat.

He’d seen that symbol before … but
never
on an I.C.E. suit.

Dr. Irving then turned and touched the black box to the collar fitting of Ethan’s flight suit.

The material warmed.

Ethan craned his head and pulled the fabric to see.
There was an identical, but smaller, silver bar there as well.

Dr. Irving saluted Ethan and shook his hand.

“Congratulations,” Dr. Irving said, beaming at him, “on your field promotion, Second
Lieutenant
Blackwood.”

Ethan was stunned speechless.

His eyes then locked onto the black box in Dr. Irving’s hand, and he glanced back at the I.C.E. suits lined up on the deck, and he got an idea. He wasn’t the only one who deserved special recognition.

“Just exactly how does that thing work?” Ethan asked.

  28  

IF ETHAN HAD BUTTERFLIES BOILING IN HIS
stomach before, it now felt like someone had kicked over a hornet’s nest and they were attacking those butterflies. He was glad he hadn’t eaten dinner, or it would’ve been upchucked onto the flight deck.

That’d be a
great
start to being an officer.

And it wasn’t only Ethan who had a case of the nerves.

It was five in the morning, and every technician, officer, crewman, and Resister pilot crowded the flight deck of the hangar, looking worried as they wrapped up one last system check of the I.C.E. suits.

The fight was almost here.

Felix and Paul went to their armor and tried to peel off the curious bandages plastered under the wing case hinges on the insects’ “shoulders.” Before they could remove them, however, senior technicians waved them off the rhinoceros beetle and praying mantis.

Madison, Emma, and the other Sterling kids, also curious, asked about the bandages on their units.

However, the technicians were under Ethan’s orders to say nothing about those bandages or let any pilot touch them.

It was weird for Ethan to give orders, especially to the technicians, who’d been raised at the Seed Bank, were older than Ethan, and knew encyclopedias more about I.C.E. systems.

But they’d saluted and did as he asked.